Someone on tumblr was talking about demisexuality and this is very unfinished but I’m posting it anyway. Sparkly maybe don’t read this just because: unfinished and not very coherent.

There are so many different issues that go into my ace-spec feelings and I haven’t really put much effort into untanging them all yet but I really should. To be totally honest, there is a reason why I haven’t tried very hard and it’s because I’m scared some of them will be shame-inducing.

One of the things I have a clearer understand of is– totally apart from any feelings about sex– probably 80% of my “nope” about sex- and relationship-related things is about social norms and people expecting things from me. Like, the idea that there’s a role I’m supposed to be playing that I’ve accidentally stepped into by paying neutral/positive attention to someone, and now either I’m obligated to follow through, or (more likely) I have to confess what an awful failure I am because I can’t follow through on what Normal People are Supposed To feel & do in this situation.

“Why can’t you just do what a Normal Person is supposed to do?”

“Because I don’t feel that way about this.”

“Well why don’t you just feel what a Normal Person is supposed to feel?”

Like, that’s the thing. The fear that I’m incapable of doing something that’s supposed to come naturally to everyone, and someday I’ll be caught out and everyone will know that I’m horribly deficient somehow. That is the highly specific weird trauma that I carry.

It comes up on a lot of different topics, but dating is one of the big ones. I’m perfectly capable of saying no to things I don’t want, it isn’t that. I just feel awful sometimes about having to say no, before & after I say it.

This issue is also why I have such strong feelings about some sort of radical-feminist ideas about sex, and also about some kinds of mental health advice tbh, even when I know it’s totally well-intentioned– anything that tends towards people telling me how I should feel about something, or what I should want, or that how I think I feel is incorrect, brings up these feelings.

There are a lot of things that I would like to be able to discuss and argue against– because I do believe on a rational level that they’re harmful, it’s not just a Sad Feeling– but I don’t because it’s too upsetting. I would like to have more in me than “Fuck you, that’s an awful thing to say,” re: some kinds of discourse about kink, but usually I don’t have any more than that.